People Magazine

Here’s what the January 2001 article in People Magazine had to say about iskip.com.

“Spinning? Old news. Tae-Bo? Yawn. In the 21st century, skipping is the hottest way to sweat, says Kim Corbin, who’s out to prove that the giggle-inducing gate is more than child’s play. Besides being a “really happy movement,” says Corbin, “it gets your heart pumping and increases your energy.” Corbin leads monthly group “skips” in San Francisco, where she lives, and has inspired skipping clubs in more than 20 states via her Web site, http://www.iskip.com

A freelance book publicist, Corbin, 32, first put a skip in her step in April 1999 in an effort to lose weight (she dropped 25 lbs. over 18 months) but kept it up because “skipping reconnects me with joy,” she says, “When I’m walking down the street there are a million things in my head. Whenever you skip, that doesn’t happen. Corbin convert Patrick Purcell, 50, a mapmaker with the Burueau of Land Management in Sacramento agrees: “It brings up the happy endorphins.”

Because skipping is more free-form than running (and, says Corbin, can be easier on the knees), some adult skippers try variations like the butterfly skip (arms swing wide) or the chicken (arms flapping), but most just relive their childhood. “All the things we did as kids we don’t do anymore,” laments occupational therapist Nancy Mangelli, 35, “This is great.”

Corbin is making sure that today’s kids don’t miss out on the fun either. Working with the nonprofit Project Fit America, a group that promotes fitness among children, she will lead a skipping tour of U.S. schools next year. Says Stacey Cook, PFA’s executive director: “It’s a great way to get parents and kids to exercise together.”

Unfortunately, the hoped for sponsorship for that skipping tour would never come to be.